I guess I don’t mind it being there, I just don’t need the icon and unread count staring me in the face so I installed this greasemonkey script.  It works pretty good, but if left the Buzz link underlined which conflicted with the Helvetimail script I use.  So I made one small change, which you can get here.

Also, from this thread it looks like the script will be in the Better Gmail 2 extension soon, which I’m sure you’re all already using.

This post is just to announce the general availability of the app, but I’m planning a future post to go over my impressions of the iPhone app development system that Apple provides, learning objective C, and discussing the store as a source of revenue (once there are some sales).  So look forward to that after I get back from my vacation.

I’ve always been a desktop user, I never got my first laptop until near the end of college, so mice were always my device of choice.  Over time mice have evolved from a quality perspective (ball, to LED, to laser) and from a functionality perspective (2-button, 3-button, scroll wheel, horizontal scroll*, etc), and these additions have added a lot to the mousing experience, but its still not perfect.  On multi-monitor setups you still have to drag the mouse across the mouse pad (and possibly pick it up and move it so that you can continue) to move from one side of the environment to another.  This can be a pain, mentally and on your wrist.

As an alternative to typical mice, I’ve been looking into trackballs. I remember learning about them in my HCI class in college, but never looking any further as they were generally used in CAD and similar design software.  However, one of my friends has used one for years for general computing and she swears by it.  Heck, even Blackberries and the Android phones have a trackball. So in an effort to cement my role as the eccentric ‘kid’ at work I think I’m going to have to pick one up to see if there are any advantages.  I have hope, as it can’t be much worse then the clit mouse.

Finally on to what I really wanted to discuss though: trackpads, specifically Apple’s amazing laptop trackpads.  Multi-touch is all the rage with the iPhone’s surge in popularity, and Apple has applied the same functionality to their newer laptops.  We all know the marketing details, you can ‘pinch’ and ’stretch’ to look at photos, but I think it’s even more basic functionality that is really important.  There is no button, you just press the pad to register a ‘click’, press with 2 fingers for a ‘right-click’, and if you want to scroll just rest one finger on the pad and move another (up/down, left/right, even *SHOCK* diagonally).  This scrolling can be done anywhere, mind you, you don’t have to find the the scrolling area on the right side of most other trackpads. I wont even go over the Expose functionality because it’s not relevant to other OSes, but these tiny features improve usability soooo much anyway.

I use some of these trackpad features everyday on my MacBook Pro (late 2007 model) and it really makes me wish I could have the same functionality on my desktop at work.  It’s feels like I’m in Minority Report with the gesture and finger recognition and then at work I feel less productive.  The closest you get to this with a mouse is something like mouse gestures.  I think an ideal solution would be a mouse pad sized USB trackpad for the desktop, something like Wacom tablet without the pen.  I’ve yet to find anything that fits the bill though and even if one was available it would have to be of a comparable quality to Apple’s existing trackpads before it would really be comfortable to use.

Availability of a product like this though may bring us closer to an environment of ’soft’ input devices such as  Swype, the laser keyboard or Microsoft Surface.  With devices like these and the shift to other touch technologies like the iPhone, I fear that the desktop computer or input devices as we currently know them will be obsolete by the time such a trackpad is possible to release.

*How come horizontal scrolling is not as widely supported as the vertical scroll wheel?  It’s been around for years, but on Windows and Linux I’ll be damned if I’ve had a homogeneous horizontal scrolling experience across multiple applications.

Obviously we are exposed to crime stories at an early age, even Looney Tunes, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and GI Joe told crime stories.  But the earliest quality crime show that I remember watching was Homicide: Life on the Street.  I was probably 10 or 11 when I first watching it when staying over at a friend’s house.  Every time I stayed over it seemed like his parents were watching Homicide.  It was so different from what I had seen before. My family didn’t watch a lot of TV dramas, so every time I stayed over and got to watch it, I was totally drawn in.  At that age, maybe it was the violence, but I also think it was the dialog.  It wasn’t a normal show, you had to pay attention, every crime was a puzzle that you watched being solved. It was like learning critical thinking, but not with books or in a class room.

In my teens this love of crime, while not overt, showed itself in my taste in movies.  I found my favorite films Memento and Pulp Fiction and at this point realized the amazing stories that could be told through this medium.  And these stories could provide more then entertainment, they could carry a message as well.

Now I find myself in my twenties, writing this, and crime is still there in the books I read, comics (Criminal), and TV shows. And while all these stories are entertaining, one in particular carries some very important messages. The Wire.  I watched The Wire a few months ago and the more I think about it the more I find myself in love with it. The Wire takes major elements of society (economic class, the drug trade, politics, and education) and shines a light on them in a way newspapers just can’t. It exposes the underbelly of society not through articles and editorials, but by telling a story with characters that you really care about.  Sure the characters are warped and self destructive, but they feel real.  The show exposes the cracks in our society in such an elegant and entertaining way that it’s only flaw is that you may be too entertained to realize its message. Coincidentally, The Wire was created by David Simon, the same man that created Homicide and introduced me to this genre when I was younger. Mr. Simon, truly had something to say with this series that was dwarfed by The Sopranos during its time on HBO.

Now, there have been plenty of reviews of The Wire in the past year, with its final season airing and arriving on DVD, so hopefully more people will continue to discover it and its message.  But most of all I hope people watch the show, and try do something about the problems it identifies. The Wire shouts “Look, this is what the problem is!” and it’s up to us to do something about it.  Unfortunately, most people are too busy perpetuating the problems… it’s a crime.

There is a great 2-part interview with Simon here.

I’ll preface this by noting that I am not a musician, I do not know the trials that they go through to get discovered, however I am a consumer and I know what I want. So I’m looking at this from a consumer perspective.

I actually started a huge diatribe about this topic earlier today, but I’ve since trashed it rather then editing it.  So now I just want to express a few points…

First of all, Trent Reznor acknowledges that he probably wouldn’t be where he is without the label, and that that popularity still fuels his success now.  However, he feels that modern technologies (myspace, youtube, etc) makes starting out and marketing yourself much easier then is was when he was coming up.

Yes, there are thousands of artists out there competing for attention on the internet, but the same rules apply as getting noticed by a label.  Create something good, and be able to follow it up.  It’s the same competition, just a new venue to vie for attention in. Look at Ok-Go, they did it, other artists can too.

Trent uses hyperbole when saying the labels ‘cant use email’.  It’s a way of saying that they aren’t with the times.  Look how long it took for the lawsuits to stop, and digital downloads to be where they are.  Corporations are rigid, greedy, bloated, and wasteful.

Now, this is my own anger with corporations coming out, but it is related.  Corporations find something that works, monetize it, and stick with it.  Labels are no different, they pump up artists to make a profit.  This makes sense, it’s capitalism, however for music it is harmful to the industry and to culture and make the corporation rigid, greedy, bloated and wasteful.

• Harmful to industry: other labels follow the status quo, the problems multiply
• Harmful to culture: ‘popular’ music dominates the radio, while generally lacking real skill at the art.
• Rigid: the label is set in their ways and doesn’t embrace new technology.
• Greedy: this is the american way, look out for #1, screw everyone else.
• Bloated & wasteful: companies grow to huge sizes with multiple VPs, secretaries, exuberant salaries, jets, etc.

All this has lead to low pay outs for the actual artists so label can improve their bottom line, and has also lead to shitty cookie cutter bands dominating the radio.

Don’t the artists creating something deserve as much as the people selling it?  It’s a symbiosis, right? Wrong, the value of the artist gets lessened as more desperate artists lower their price to sign with a label.  The ratio or artists to labels is out of wack.  By reducing that ratio closer to 1 and making the artist their own marketer is the only way they will get a fair shake.

I was skeptical of git at first, and I had been meaning to setup svn for my stuff, but the recent surge in git use caused me to check it out.  So far I like it, but if you’re like me and don’t need advanced source control then cvs or svn will probably still work for you.

I’m also trying to learn Lisp.  I ‘learned’ Scheme is college, but now I think I can actually appreciate and get something out of the language.  Defmacro has some interesting articles on Lisp that should be checked out.

Part of what lead me to GitHub and Lisp is the Programming section of Reddit.  It’s the only part of Reddit that I read, but it’s got a grate community and quality posts so I recommend checking for interesting posts once daily.  You may learn something.  I gotta thank Scott for recommending it to me.

I don’t know why, there’s just something about it.  I usually don’t have more then 4 apps running at a time (and that’s if you even consider Finder and app), so why do I need this thing sitting around taking up space?  Yeah, you can hide it, I still bump into it and it pops up though.  Why can’t I totally disable it?

This isn’t just a rant on OSX though, I could say the same thing about Windows, but it is a slightly different story.  On Windows the taskbar identifies open windows (tasks), not running applications, and this is great for seeing what you have minimized to return to later.  I maximize and minimize windows (on Windows) all day at work, but how often do you minimize Safari or iTunes on OSX?  If I need more space to see my desktop I use create a new ‘Space’ with Spaces, or use Expose (F9, F10, or F11) to get the info I need or switch windows.

I love aesthetics too, I want a simple, clean minimalistic interface.  If I don’t have a use for something or it looks out of place it drives me nutz.  The dock looks out of place to me.  Sure, you can put the dock in different places, the bottom and the sides, but why oh why does the dock change it’s appearance when you put it on the side?  You can theme the bottom one, why not the sides?

In the next release of OSX I think they should offer a ‘mouse-less mode’, so that power users with aesthetic neuroses like me can be put at ease.  I’m thinking an interface totally controlled by Command-Tab and Quicksilver.  Maybe I’m overreacting, or maybe I should just switch to Linux and use ratpoison.

UPDATE: I found Dock Gone recently, and it seems to fulfill my need.  I’m much calmer now.

I started with my DVD shelfs which have about 200 DVDs that I mostly obtained during high school and college.  These DVDs were ‘must-have’ ‘collectibles’ that I ‘needed’ at the time, what crap, such a waste of money.  I always liked the idea of having a library of things that I like so I can go back to them or lend them out to spread the things I like.  But DVDs are not how I should have been doing this.  Now I feel like DVDs are the modern day library, but for the poor.  Like how last century the educated would have large oak/mahogany rooms filled with books showing their knowledge and status.  But DVDs are for laymen, who buy and buy based on impulse and marketing not need.  Do you really really need that What Happens in Vegas DVD?  Who looks smarter a guy with a room full of books or a guy with a room full of DVDs including The Matrix (obligatory BTW), American Pie, and CSI Season 1.

But I digress…

While there are movies there that I’ve watched over and over, there are others that I haven’t even touched and just bought to have for the future.  Part of me wants to keep these around for future viewings, but everything is going digital and at this point I’d much rather get a movie on demand then have the extra clutter.  I look at my roommate’s sparse room and think ‘I gotta live a little more like that.’

After the DVDs I hit the video games, if I’m never going to play them again why do I need them.  PC, PS2, etc, the majority are all going.  And why the hell did I buy game guides for these things?  It takes out all the fun and all the information is online anyway.

The final target while I was home was my closet, oh dear, what a mess.  It was stuffed to the rafters with old clothes and gadget boxes.  Why did I need to keep the boxes for routers, hard drives, video cards, etc?  All the old clothes went into a bag to be donated and all the boxes went to the recycle bin.  Hopefully, someone in need can get some use from these things that were just going to waste.

The job’s not done yet I have more stuff at home to trash, but it’s a start and I’ll get more done over the coming weeks and at Christmas.

Lastly, if anyone else is planning on cleaning out their old stuff, just know that you don’t have to trash everything.  Like I said, you can donate things and even have a yard sale.  I’m planning a sale on multiple fronts (work, craigslist, half.com, etc) to get a little money back on my DVD ‘investment’ and hopefully I’ll be able to use that money on some reusable purchases.

The best example came from the good people at Kicker Studio, where they wrote up a nice instruction manual that I found very useful, check it out.  With the guide in hand I decided to get off my ass and make one. It only took a few hours to put it together today, and I’m very satisfied.  You’ll never find a 8×4 whiteboard for $50 in a store.  Next step is to pick up some J-Channel molding to smooth the edges so the board can’t get dented.

Hopefully, this will help me finish some of those dead projects mentioned previously.

Life lessons:

• Tools are expensive, but worth buying because they’re a one time cost and nothing sucks more then not having the tool to do a job.
• If you own a small car always befriend someone that owns a pickup truck, it will come in handy.
• Contact cement is dangerous: keep it (and it’s fumes) away from any flames, and wear a mask when using it.

Is there something other engineers do to keep themselves motivated on personal projects once they get home from work? Similarly, I have a few seminal programming books that I WANT to read but I’m never in the mood to sit down and read what is essentially a text book.